


The Anti-Fic

by kazterboro



Category: Jack McLoughlin - Fandom, Sean McLoughlin - Fandom, jacksepticeye
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Angst and Feels, Antisepticeye Sean McLoughlin, Blood and Injury, Childbirth, Coma, Comatose Sean McLoughlin, Depression, Domestic Disputes, Domestic Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Gen, I'm Going to Hell, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Minor Character Death, Multi, Origin Story, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Poverty, Realistic, References to Depression, Sad, Sean McLoughlin Egos, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Discovery, Self-Sacrifice, Story within a Story, Theories, Video & Computer Games, YouTube, i don't know how to use tags, i hope this is enough
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23148685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kazterboro/pseuds/kazterboro
Summary: What happens when you take every morsel of content that you can possibly find from years worth of YouTube videos and attempt to mash them together into a story that will rip out the heart of even the person writing it?You get this fic!Please step right up and enjoy one heck of a ride as we strap ourselves into an emotional rollercoaster called "The JSE Fandom's Dumpster Fire of Feels"!Straight ahead direct your attention to a wide variety of Ego origin stories, funky glitches, and Chase just wanting to be with his children.I hope you're ready, cause I certainly wasn't when I decided to begin writing this!
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. Bro Average: Maria

It smelled like home - a dusty cabin tucked away in the wilds. 

Warm breath caressed the back of her neck as she slowly woke up from her nap to find the source of this nostalgic scent coming from the man dozing behind her. As she grew more aware she could feel his arms cradling her and their unborn baby... his arm wrapped protectively around her belly as if he had fallen asleep trying to feel the tiny miracle move. 

Wincing, Stacy struggled to roll over, attempting to accommodate her nearly full-term size. It must have been 2am, though the light from light-posts outside their apartment filtered through the shutters as though it was daylight.

Chase was almost never at the house these days, this made his presence almost as much of a miracle as the small child they would soon have in their lives. She felt alone, a fact that her family reminded her of nearly every day. The thought that this would be normal once they had another mouth to feed fueled the anxiety gnawing at her heart.

Every late night he had more excuses.  
But surely they could work things out.  
He was stressed about making ends meet after all. 

Finally Stacy had managed to get a better view of her husband's face. Even while sleeping she could see the dark circles beneath his eyes and the fact that even with all of her moving he hadn't woken up showed just how tired he was. 

It had been nearly a week since she had seen him last. The only evidence that he had come home was the food missing from the fridge.

Gingerly she pushed the disheveled hair from his face. The brown curls clung to his forehead, and she noted that his baseball cap had fallen onto the pillow beside his head.

He really did smell, but she couldn't bear to wake him. 

Nevertheless, there was no way she could remain in this uncomfortable position. With the utmost care, Stacy slipped from his arms and out of bed. The crumpled grey duvet was warm where she had been laying. In these last few weeks of her pregnancy it had become nearly impossible for her to find a comfortable position. The air would be too cold in the house, the weather too warm, the chairs too hard. She knew that these challenges were unreasonable... so she tried to remind Chase that this was just due to the pregnancy. There was no balance.  
Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Stacy pulled her hair into a bun and glanced back at her sleeping husband as he drooled on the area where her head had just been laying. 

Chase's shoes were still on, and the clothes on his back looked about as ragged as he was. 

She thought back to the young man she fell in love with in Highschool. He loved sports, and was good at them too - at least any sports that required someone to be fast and could accommodate dim wits. He would take her out to ice cream covered in grass-stains and grinning ear to ear. So full of energy, it was like Chase was powered by his own miniature sun... and it melted her heart. 

Their love was simple and sweet... and thinking back, she wished things could always be that way.

Pushing these likely hormone-induced thoughts from her mind, Stacy fumbled with his shoes, dutifully unlacing them and slipping them from his feet. She dropped them unceremoniously to the floor at the foot of the bed.  
At the very least she could make sure needless dirt wouldn't get on the duvet. 

\----

Heartbeats echoed in Chase's ears like heavy drums as his aching fingers held on desperately to a rope suspended in a dark emptiness. The rhythm was maddening as it echoed in his skull, but perhaps worse was the laughter echoing behind his head... always out of sight. 

He tried to wheel around, his hands aching with pain from the white-knuckle grip on the rope... 

regardless of the direction he turned...  
the voice was always behind him... mocking him and his fear. 

It was almost as if...  
… it was coming from inside him... 

Chase woke up with a start to the sound of glass shattering on a tile floor. The sound was a welcome reprieve from the nightmare he had been having just moments before. He looked around to find himself in his room - barefoot - and suddenly freezing from the chill of the air conditioning on full-blast. It woke him quickly as the adrenaline pumping through his veins fueled the cold sweat gripping his chest. Stacy had left the bed... which meant the sound...

"CHASE!!!"

He was barely aware of pushing his body from the bed as he heard Stacy scream for him. He could tell she was in pain, and the moans of agony which followed his name told him everything he needed to know. 

He knew he needed to be there. 

Why? That didn't matter. 

The door to the kitchen was open as he slid into the living room with his haste and he nearly fell when he saw Stacy leaning against the counter. The glass was in shards on the floor, but it didn't appear to have cut her... something was wrong. 

There was no blood... what could?

"Chase! The baby is coming!"

Chase felt his gut drop as she uttered the most important four words he had heard in his life so far. His instincts propelled him forward, heedless of any danger to himself as he slipped his arms around her body. 

"The hospital... we have to get you to the hospital."

"A-ah... it hurts!"

Now that he was closer he could see that her water had broken just as they said it would in all the pamphlets and books he had been reading during his overnight shifts at work for the past nine months. The baby really was coming after all. 

"Breathe, Stacy. Breathe."

Chase tried to push the fear of her pain to the back of his mind as he picked up his wife and headed for the door. She screamed again as he grabbed his keys from the table in the hall and he tried to blink back the tears welling up in his blue eyes. He would do anything to make sure she wasn't suffering... if only he could make it better somehow... 

"It'll be okay... I promise."

"You promise SHIT! IT HURTS!!" She was clinging to him desperately now as he stumbled down the stairs of the apartment and across the gravel driveway to the car. Stacy's yells returned when Chase tried to set her in the passenger seat. 

"Stace, I have to get you there somehow. It's either the front seat where I can help you, or the back seat where I can't." He was kneeling on the jagged rocks, cold air chilling him to the bone as he pleaded with his wife… hoping against all hope that she would listen to him and breathe for once.

"What help are you? You're never here when I need you!" Stacy's eyes were red with tears, her hands gripping his shirt like he would fly away at any moment.

"Honey, I don't think this is a good ti-"

"It's never a good time!" Stacy pushed him back, her mind blinded by pain as he went sprawling and she shut the passenger side door.  
With a sharp intake of breath, Chase hauled himself into the driver's seat and started the engine, his wife's tears nearly drowning the sound of the motor out entirely.

\---

It smelled like chemicals and death. With such a stench... how could something so incredible be happening? It certainly sounded like someone was dying as Stacy screamed in pain and nearly crushed his hand with hers. He was practically on the floor beside her bed. 

Doctors and nurses seemed to buzz around his head like bees, but he wouldn't be moved. At some point they had insisted on treating him for glass cuts on his feet, but he had attended to this as if a man in a trance. 

Not even time seemed to matter now that Stacy was in labor.

All of his attention was fixed on his wife as she brought their miracle into the world. 

"A healthy baby girl!" 

Stacy's yells ceased and she gasped air like she had just swam for miles. 

"My baby... I want my baby..." her weakened arms reached out towards the Nurse and the woman dutifully placed the baby on her chest while they cleaned her up. 

The air that was once ringing with his wife's screams was now echoing with the yells of new life. 

"Sir, would you like to cut the cord?"

Chase was brought back to reality by the sight of a nurse handing him a pair of scissors which already had the umbilical cord in their grasp. The sight of blood nearly made him faint, but he steeled his resolve and did his duty before his attention returned to the sight of his baby girl nestled in his wife's arms. 

With some effort, the nurses were able to extricate the child from Stacy's arms and wrap her up, and within moments the Nurse had returned with a wiggling bundle of joy in her arms. 

"Here's daddy!"

She seemed to be speaking to the baby, and Chase's face went pale. Everything he had read... all of the waiting... all of the long hours at work. Suddenly he was afraid of this moment. The beeping of machines echoed in his mind... the light green tile on the walls seemed to swim at the edges of his vision... his breath became short.

"What if I drop her. I-I can't... "

Ignoring his words, the woman pushed the baby into his arms and guided his hands to where they needed to be. 

"A natural. She has your nose." The nurse turned her attention to Stacy, "Have you decided on a name?"

Chase's blue eyes met with his daughter's which opened wide as if in wonder. To think he had been afraid of dropping her... now he was afraid that he'd ever be able to let her go. In that moment, if he could have it his way, her feet would never touch the hard cold ground. 

"Maria Saoirse Brody."

\---------------


	2. Bro Average: Wild Mountain Thyme

It wasn't his alarm that woke him today, but it might as well have been. He had missed the signs... the small wiggles of struggle against the blankets from the tiny sleeping form nestled in the crook of his arm. He had missed the tiny hand's clumsy trajectory as this small creature slapped at his face while it stretched. This small bundle of joy had no concept of time, and as such... at exactly 2am new lungs released a scream of frustration which pulled Chase directly from his troubled sleep and threw him into the reality of his angry daughter beside him.

  
"... C... chase.... "

  
He barely heard Stacy's complaints, his body on auto-pilot as he scooped the discontented creature into his arms and pushed his way from the warmth of their bed. Baby Maria squinted at the light seeping between the blinds from the outside streetlight only resulting in her further discontentment.

  
One thing Chase had learned over the past few weeks was that babies - especially newborns - specifically required one of three things: Food, diaper changes, comfort, or entertainment.

  
Wait... that was four.

  
Eh, it was early - mistakes are expected.

  
"Shh... I got you." Gently he cradled the screaming bundle to his shoulder and began rocking on his feet as his tired mind tried to catch itself up on the situation and find the cause of his daughter's discomfort. The blinding green light of the clock on the side table read **02:03** , far too early to be awake. Baby Maria had been fed before bed, so it was possible that she was already hungry again. The diaper seemed safely empty, and there was no sign that anything else could be bothering the small minion who was now adequately distracted from her predicament and busied herself with grabbing at Chase's dark messy hair.

  
"Let's get you some food..."

  
The floor was cold outside their room and he cursed under his breath at the shock as he shuffled through the dark apartment towards the kitchen.

  
Stacy had tried to make him purchase a crib to make the newborn sleep in a different room, but Chase had refused. To think he would let the best thing that ever happened to him out of his sight was crazy. They had fought, something that she had promised would end after the baby was born, but she finally agreed when he agreed to take care of the infant at night.

  
Chase's fingers felt numb as he fumbled with the light to the kitchen - wincing at the bright light when he finally succeeded in flipping it. Baby Maria had finally quieted down, her hiccups all that were left of her tears as her tiny fingers grasped the neck of his shirt. Her hair gave her head a kind of peach-fuzz texture that Chase noticed with amusement as he kissed the top of her head, holding her close to his body with one arm as he started the long and arduous process of warming formula. Humming under his breath, Chase remembered back to an old song his mother had sung to his sister when he was little. Usually Stacy was around to complain about his sentimentality, but this once he figured it was harmless to remember back to days when life was simpler.

  
_"And we'll all go together_  
_To pluck wild mountain thyme_  
_All around the blooming heather_  
_Will ye go, Lassie go?"_

Sniffing, Chase rubbed away the tears threatening his tired eyes, but the memories continued to flow unbidden. How long had it been since he had spoken to his mother? It made his chest hurt to think of how she would likely never see her granddaughter. Since before he and Stacy had married she and his mother hadn't gotten along. Everything had happened so fast... and on tired nights like these he regretted answering Stacy's demand to choose between the two most important women in his life.

  
Shaking the formula bottle, he made his way to the couch and eased his tired body onto the cushioned seat. Carefully, so as to not disturb the cherub in his arms, Chase pulled his legs up onto the couch with his knees up. The position of his knees made a little seat for his daughter who was eyeing the bottle intently now, and he dutifully satiated her hunger with the warm bottle of formula.

  
A wave of relief rushed over him as he saw that this was indeed what she had wanted and he leaned his head on the back of the couch watching her. If he had been asked that same fateful question today, there is no way he could choose anyone over this small bundle of joy and burps in his arms... not even Stacy.

  
"I KNEW IT! You never cared about me! What am I to you? Some baby factory? You only stayed with me because of Maria didn't you? You're so selfish!" Stacy was in hysterics, her cries nearly louder than those of the one-year-old sitting on the rug in the middle of the living room. Chase had just walked in the front door, his bag of groceries from the corner store hanging limp in his hand as he looked on at the scene before him. When Stacy had texted him about needing to talk when he got home, this wasn't what he had expected.

  
Though what had he expected? He wasn't sure...

  
There was broken glass and dirt on the floor blocking his path, a tattered remnant of a houseplant attempting and failing to bar his way as another plant was grasped precariously in his wife's hands.

  
"Every day you get to go out and live your life to the fullest! Day in and day out I'm here slaving away for OUR child!"

  
"S-Stacy... Please... put the plant down..." Chase could only imagine what the neighbors thought of them at this point, and he was sure that the landlord would be having a terse conversation with him later. Pale, the young man pushed the door to a close behind him and slowly placed the groceries on the floor out of harm's way. Maria was still crying, but from the tone of things it seemed like it was mainly due to the noise that Stacy was making with her weeping.

  
She looked like a wreck, her eyeliner smeared around her eyes where she had clearly tried to wipe tears away earlier. "I want to be able to enjoy living! You keep me locked up here... like... like I'm some kind of prisoner." Luckily for the plant, the pot was sturdy and didn't shatter when it fell from Stacy's limp fingers and the distraught woman followed suit - crumpling up in the floor as sobs shook her body.

  
"H-hey... " Carefully stepping around the broken glass, Chase rushed to pull her into his arms only to be beaten off of her in her fury.

  
"Is this about you going out with Vicky to Tennis practice?"

  
"YOU ACCUSED ME OF BEING A WHORE!" This outburst seemed to take so much out of her that she was left keening in the floor beside him, her breaths shaky as he waited to respond.

  
How could things have become such a mess... "Stace… Tennis practice is expensive... and all I hear you and your friends talking about is that new tennis instructor... what's his name... Rick? I never accused you of being a-..."

  
Somehow his explanation only made her cries louder but she finally let him pull her into his arms. "Y-you said... that I only want to go because of the e-eye candy... V-vicky said... you must think... I...", Stacy's crying was finally dying down somewhat, but she remained inconsolable.

  
“I'm sorry... I see it was unfair of me to assume... please, baby. You're scaring Mari." Using the edge of his shirt he tried to mop up the tears trailing down her face to help her see.

  
"S-so I can still go to Tennis practice...?"

  
The pit growing in Chase's stomach felt cold as he tried to hide his anxiety at her question and he tried to push the thought of the pink-slip in his wallet from his mind. Surely there'd be a way he could make it work. She did work so hard with the baby at home. What were more hours to her happiness and in turn happiness for the baby? Stacy was hiccuping almost like a child, but the thought of her crying again struck deeper in his chest.

  
"Please, let's talk about this tomorrow after you've had some time to rest... it's late and I brought home food from the corner store for dinner."

  
Stacy's hollow expression was that of someone who has cried everything out of themselves. Luckily, his work wiping the tears from her face had seemed to calm her and she finally seemed composed enough to tend to the toddler who had decided her toes were more interesting than trying to out-cry her mother.

  
Beaten, Chase pushed himself from the floor just in time for a loud knock on the door to break the semblance of peace that had descended upon the small family.

"It's the Police! We've gotten reports about loud noises! Please open up!"

  
Chase's eyes were wide, "Y-yes Sir. Let me get to the door." The young man stumbled over the broken glass, failing to dust tear stains from his shirt as he opened the door - his face as pale as a sheet.

  
The Officer's expression was grim as he saw the state of the room and Stacy sitting in the chair on the other side of the room with Maria in her arms. The woman's face had been improved by Chase's efforts to wipe her tears away, but it was still painfully obvious that she had been in quite a state.

  
"We've heard reports of possible domestic violence coming from your apartment. There were a number of loud noises and the sound of a woman crying extensively." He seemed very matter-of-fact, and the sound of radio chatter alerted Chase to the Officer's partner standing further down the breezeway to their apartment entrance.

  
"I-it was just a misunderstanding. I came home and the pot was broken like this. We've worked things out..."

  
"WE'VE WORKED OUT SHIT!"

  
The Officer's eyebrow raised at her yell and Chase shrunk under his wife's gaze.

  
"Ma'am, is everything alright? Are you injured?" The Officer had placed his hand inside the door frame now and Chase could see his partner get closer to hear the conversation.

  
What semblance of sanity that Stacy had possessed before the Police had knocked on the door seemed to be fading as she pointed a finger at Chase. "My husband keeps me here working 24/7 and doesn't let me go out and have one small joy! Not one thing outside of this HELL HOLE! It's always MONEY MONEY MONEY! HE CARES MORE ABOUT MONEY THAN HIS CHILD... What next... I was afraid..."

  
She began crying again...

  
"Sir, I'd like to take you in for some questions."

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning.   
> Or is it?
> 
> I want to mention that this is going to eventually tie in all of the Egos that we have so far. Originally it was going to be only an Anti origin story, but the story itself is gaining a life of its own as I write out the plot points of what's going to happen in the next few chapters.   
> The only foreshadowing that I can confidently give is that things are not always as they seem, and that some of the plot points that I've drafted have hit me in the feels and I haven't even fully written them.   
> Lets burn together, shall we?


End file.
